Plankton Not At Risk From Ocean Acidification Experts Find - Another IPCC Prediction Drowns In The Facts

The world's coastal regions abound in plankton and, of course, the IPCC climate doomsday scientists predicted their demise due to ocean acidification from too much human CO2 emissions

Read here. The IPCC prediction that the sea's plankton are at survival risk because of ocean acidification has gained much attention in the mainstream press. But does this prediction have scientific merit?

The Nielsen et al. team of researchers decided to investigate if the prediction was sound in terms of science.

"The authors write that "the atmospheric CO2 concentration is rising, and models predict that by the end of the century it will have increased to twice the amount seen at any given time during the last 15 million years," stating that "this will cause a decrease in average surface water pH of 0.4," while noting that planktonic protists will be among the organisms to be affected first by this change."..."tested whether reduced pH would affect plankton communities over an incubation period of 14 days."...researchers determined that nutrient uptake and photosynthetic parameters "were all unaffected by pH treatments 8.3-7.7," treatments that they say "match the predicted 21st century changes in CO2 and pH." In addition, they found that "cellular carbon and total particulate organic carbon were both completely unaffected by pH treatment within this range," and that "the same was true for the succession of all 25 enumerated protist species." [Lasse Tor Nielsen, Gustaaf M. Hallegraeff, Simon W. Wright, Per Juel Hansen 2012: Aquatic Microbial Ecology]

Conclusion: As multiple scientific studies have now shown, the ocean acidification hysteria is just that. Marine life seems extremely capable in its adaptive abilities, such that the risk from lower sea pH levels due to excess CO2 is tiny. This is also now true for the world's plankton communities in spite of the IPCC's prediction.